Shape-Shifter (17 page)

A black nylon roll-neck sweater, the type worn by spivs.
A calf-length camel-hair coat.
Some flashy, fake gold rings and a neck-chain.
A pork-pie hat, brown with a feather in it.
Hush-puppy shoes, soft and noiseless.
Second-hand grey trousers with a sharp crease.

That evening, Charlie regarded me confidently from the full-length mirror in my bedroom. I decided to take him out in the street. The night was damp and freezing cold. I hate the cold. Charlie seemed to love it. He had not spoken much but when he had it was with a northern accent. One odd thing I noticed. Normally, I am short-sighted, but that evening I could see far, way down the street. Outside, standing on the pavement, I knew immediately that Charlie was vicious and predatory. All he wanted to do was to wait in shop doorways and pounce on passers-by. I didn’t let him, of course. But before I could stop him, he had taken my car keys and let himself into my car. He drove too fast, cursing and swearing at any delay, pushing the nose of the car right up against the bumpers of other, slower cars in front. He wanted to hurt people. There was a certain thrill to his viciousness. I took him home. I was exhausted. He wasn’t. I undressed and went to bed.

A short while later, I took him on stage for the first time. It was a mistake. He had not the least intention of amusing the audience.

He wanted to frighten them. He said horrible things. Quickly, I took Charlie home and put him away in the cupboard.

‘What happened to that character you were creating?’ a friend enquired of me, a week or so after his debut.

‘Oh, he was too violent and dangerous,’ I giggled. ‘He had to be locked up in a mental hospital.’

Around the time I discovered Charlie, a man was, in fact, released from one of the big hospitals for the criminally insane in the north of England. Later, he was to weep, his head on the table in the police interview room, saying that the hospital was the only place where he had ever been happy. Outside, apparently, a voice kept getting into his head telling him to do certain things. He consistently denied the attack. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he repeated again and again. ‘It wasn’t me.’ In some ways, he may have been right.

In May, I read in the local newspaper that a woman who lived nearby had been savagely attacked and raped by a man who was skilful and cunning enough to leave not a fingerprint or trace of himself behind. I soon forgot about it.

A sizzling summer arrived. A Jamaican friend of mine came to stay while she finalised the last details of the publication of her book. On the day she was to leave, we were sitting with friends who had come to say good-bye. The flat was a welter of half-packed suitcases, pages of manuscript, scattered books and possible designs for her book cover.

‘I don’t like any of these designs for the book jacket,’ she grumbled. ‘I won’t have them on the front of my book.’ She shoved some clothes into a bag and turned to one of the other girls:

‘Mary, your designs are better than these. Go and do some sketches for me, quick. Take them down to the publishers on Monday and send me copies to Jamaica. I must have something with more of a Caribbean feel to it.’

Mary was on her knees studying the front covers of several books laid out on the floor. She looked up at the bookshelf and saw, resting there, a painting I had brought back with me from Haiti. Still unframed, it leant against the wall. It is a smallish painting, executed in the most brilliant colours. A leopard, one of the sacred animals of Haiti, sits under a tree in the forest. From the branches of the tree hang large, round fruits, purple, brown and scarlet sliced with yellow. The great cat, black with no markings, gazes out from thick, green foliage. His eyes are bright, lucent and alert. They appear to follow you round the room as you move.

‘Let me borrow that painting,’ said Mary. ‘The colours have the right feel.’ I did not want her to borrow the painting. It is my favourite. She will spoil it, I thought, drop coffee on it, sit on it and tear the canvas. I tried to invent an excuse as to why she could not take it:

‘Don’t take that painting. It protects my house,’ I mumbled, feebly. But she took it anyway, promising to bring it back the next day. And that night, without its protection, I was attacked.

In the afternoon, after I had driven my friend to the airport and tidied the flat a little, I sat at the table in the front room trying to complete some work. Once, I looked up and a figure darted behind some bushes that grow by the railings in the front garden. I did not sec the face. I thought no more of it. That evening, I visited friends. It must have been about one o’clock in the morning when I returned home. I remember hearing the sound of my heels clicking in the empty street as I ran from my car to the flat. It is always a disturbing sound, running footsteps at night, even if they are your own. The sound of a victim. Inside the flat, I felt safe. It was peaceful and warm. I put my bag and keys on the trunk by the front door and wandered into the large back bedroom. There, I undressed and hung my clothes in the walk-in wardrobe. Naked, I strolled into the bathroom, washed and cleaned my teeth. For some reason, I decided to sleep in the small bedroom that night. It is a tiny room. In the corner opposite the door is a single divan bed. Next to the bed is a small cupboard with a portable television set on it and a radio clock. Apart from that, there is room only for an upright bamboo chair. Two uncurtained windows are set deep in the thick, outside walls of the house. I got into bed and switched on the television. For a while, I read by the light of the television. No other lights in the flat were on. After a bit, I reached over, switched off the television and went to sleep.

What woke me I do not know. I lifted my head from the pillow to see, dimly, a figure in the doorway about four feet away from me. The room was very dark. The figure recoiled for an instant. Then it attacked. I had the impression of something erupting violently from beneath the floorboards at the side of the bed. At the same time, a rough, gloved hand was pushing into and against my mouth, forcing my head down in the pillows. This is real, I thought, this is real. I struggled to breathe and I must have been trying to scream because the voice in my ear was saying:

‘Shut up! Shut up! I’ve got a knife. I’ve got a knife.’

The voice was coarse and rough as goatskin. Scarcely able to breathe, I turned my head this way and that to get air. The whole weight of his body bore down on me. The rough, woollen-gloved hand clamped like a vice over my mouth was tearing the skin off my face as I twisted my head, trying to get away. I was suffocating. Sound that had its origin in my stomach was issuing out of my mouth, a roaring, black vomit of sound. He was still growling:

‘Shut up! Shut up! Don’t move! Don’t move!’

The fight became a grim battle. Something was being pulled round my neck. Rope. As he tightened it, I put up my right hand and managed to insert my fingers under the rope and pull it away from my wind-pipe. I pulled and pulled. It came away in my hand and I held on to it tightly. Somehow, I contrived to swing my legs out of the bed. It was too dark to see anything clearly. He was standing over me. I lunged for his balls. We fought violently in the pitch-dark room. The television set crashed to the floor and then the radio clock went as well. The bamboo chair was smashed. I was pinioned back down on the bed, still struggling:

‘I want to put a pillow-case over your head,’ he grunted.

I bellowed: ‘
NOOOOOOOOOOOO
!’

The tidal wave of noise that came from me lifted me to my feet and him with me. He darted behind me and locked his left arm tightly round my neck. We were both out of breath. There we stood. I was captured. Naked and cunning as a wild animal, I trembled. I looked about, as far as the dim light would allow, for a weapon. Nothing in sight. I was filled with a sensation of extraordinary physical fitness and well-being. All I knew was that I had no intention of being quenched, snuffed out, extinguished, murdered and silenced. I had no intention of vacating my premises and leaving my empty body in the concrete gully beneath my window. Something diabolical had entered the flat. I would fight. But, he might be too strong in the end. Events seemed to have lifted themselves onto a plane where the struggle which took place felt like the ultimate, gargantuan struggle between good and evil. There was, as yet, no winner.

Suddenly, I punched out hard over my left shoulder. My fist smacked into his eye socket. I lashed out twice more. I tried to look round at his face but he jerked his head back so that I caught the merest glimpse of a high forehead, shining in the meagre light from the window, and a strand or two of fairish hair. I never saw his face. I jabbed my flat, stiffened fingers into his gullet and held them there, pushing hard. He countered by grabbing my hand and bending the fingers back violently. More fighting and we fell to the floor. It ended with my recapture. He sat with his back to the bedside cupboard, his left arm locked once more around my neck. I sat with my legs outstretched, his left leg curled about my waist. My back was to him. I saw the grubby trainer shoe on his foot. I was tired. I wanted to fall into a deep sleep.

‘Don’t move or I’ll hurt you,’ he kept saying.

In a mockery of snug intimacy, I sat nestled between the legs of the man whose face I had not seen. We stayed locked together like this for some considerable time, in fact, until the first birdsong at the break of dawn. The battleground changed. It became a battle of wills and of wits. For the first time, we conversed.

‘Listen.’ The voice was gruff and urgent. ‘I want three things. I want money, food and a bath. I’ve been on the run for three days and I’m filthy. I’m filthy and I’m starving hungry.’

When he said he was filthy, I got the impression he was describing his inner self.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to put a pillow-case over your head.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘That’s too frightening.’

Now we were to bargain oyer every move, the advantage slipping from one to the other.

‘All right, then. All right. I’m going to tie up your hands and feet. Give me the rope back.’

‘No.’ I still held tightly on to the thin piece of rope.

‘I’ve got another piece here.’ He reached in his pocket with his free hand and dangled a second piece in front of my face.

‘I don’t want you to tie me up. You might rape me.’

‘If I was going to do that, I’d knock you spark out. If I was going to hurt you, I’d have done it by now. Give me my rope back.’

‘No. I’m too scared.’ My mind raced. I knew I had to keep him talking. ‘Where are you on the run from, anyway?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t escape from nick. The police were coming to pick me up and I went on the run from them.’

‘My husband’s on the run too,’ I said, trying to make common ground between us.

‘Well, I hope he doesn’t end up in the same nick as me after all this.’ There was a pause.

‘He did diamond robberies,’ I said.

‘Is that where you got the money for the flat from?’ I detected a strong, northern accent.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Where is he now?’ he asked, suspiciously.

‘I dunno.’ I tried making a bond between us. ‘I’m on your side, you know. Let me go. I won’t call the police. Most people I know are on the run, anyway.’

Playing for time, I embarked on a story of how a friend of mine escaped from jail. How she took a chance when one of the screws wasn’t looking and ran offfrom the party working on the outside gardens. How she knocked on the door of a stranger’s house and asked to use the telephone to call a taxi. My captor grunted to show that he was listening.

‘Naturally, as she’d just done a bunk, she didn’t have any money on her. So when the taxi came, she drove to a jeweller’s, told the cabbie to stop for a minute, ran into the shop, sold the gold chain from round her neck and that’s how she got the money to pay for the taxi.’

‘Then what?’ he asked.

‘Then – and this is brilliant,’ I continued, ‘she went to a battered wives’ hostel, told them she’d run away from a violent husband and they took her in. They hid her, helped her change her name by deed-poll and got her re-housed. Now she’s living round the corner with her four kids.’

He gave his grunting laugh.

‘So why don’t you just go away,’ I suggested quietly. ‘I won’t call the police. I don’t like them any more than you do. How long do you want me to give you to get away?’

‘Three weeks,’ he replied. We both laughed.

‘Now listen,’ he said, ‘I want you to put your hands together so I can tie you up.’

‘No. That’s too scary. You take what you want and I’ll just sit here and I won’t say anything.’

He became agitated.

‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you. You’ll do something. You’ll do something.’

‘I won’t,’ I said. But I knew I would, given a chance. And he knew it too.

‘Are you a rapist or a burglar?’ I asked.

‘I’m a professional burglar. I’m a professional burglar.’ He spoke with the insistence of a man trying to convince himself.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. It’s you that’s hurt me. I only attacked you once. You’ve attacked me twice. I’m still seeing stars from where you punched me.’

‘Sorry,’ I replied with false contrition. ‘Anyway, I don’t punch hard. I’m no Frank Bruno. I feel more like Barry McGuigan.’ I had recently seen Barry McGuigan on television being carried, bloodstained and defeated, from the boxing ring.

The man laughed. I decided to play for sympathy.

‘Ooh. I’m feeling sick,’ I said. ‘I think I’m going to faint.’

‘Don’t give me that shit,’ he hissed and I stopped.

‘Don’t move,’ he said, ‘I’m going to roll myself a smoke.’ He took his arm from my neck and began to feel for cigarette papers.

‘Don’t bother to roll one. There’s a packet of mine on that little cupboard behind you. I want one too.’ He felt around for them in the dark.

‘Where?’ he asked. ‘I can’t find them.’

‘They must have fallen on the floor in the fight,’ I replied.

He found them and lit one for me.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Carole. What shall I call you?’ I phrased the question in that way because I knew he wouldn’t give me his real name. He hesitated for a minute and then answered: